EDMUND GAYNES

Producer

Edmund Gaynes has a long history as a theatre producer as well as performer.  He was the producer of the original production of  MATTY: AN EVENING WITH CHRISTY MATHEWSON at the Two Roads Theatre in Los Angeles in 1995.  After an award-winning 9-month run, he teamed with BLACK BAGS THREE Productions to take the show to New York, producing MATTY at the Lambs Theatre (opening September 3, 1996) for a spectacular 4-month run.  Gaynes now plans a revival of MATTY in New York Off-Broadway at the Actors Temple Theatre in the Spring of 2025.  This special revival will commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the passing of Christy Mathewson.

Additionally, as a theatre producer, Mr. Gaynes’ Off-Broadway productions include the hit Black Angels Over Tuskegee, as well as recent long-running productions of Zero Hour (Drama Desk Award),  The Devil’s Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith (Drama Desk and Lortel nominations), Danny and Sylvia: The Danny Kaye Musical, The Rise of Dorothy Hale, The Big Voice: God or Merman?, Cougar The Musical, Picon Pie, Emily Mann’s Annulla, A Brush With Georgia O’Keeffe, Trolls, Panache, Chaim’s Love Song, Einstein: A Stage Portrait and Bein’ With Behan, which was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award. He produced the West Coast premieres of Marry Me a Little and Starting Here, Starting Now and was nominated for four Ovation Awards, Los Angeles’ highest theatre honors, for his productions of The Taffetas and Songs the Girls Sang.

Mr. Gaynes also produced the National Tour of Gilligan’s Island: The Musical, which played coast to coast.

He currently operates two Off-Broadway theatres in New York City: St. Luke’s Theatre and Actors Temple Theatre, as well as the Whitmore-Lindley Theatre Center, the Avery Schreiber Playhouse and the BrickHouse Theatre in Los Angeles. In addition to the above New York producing credits, he has produced throughout the country, with over forty productions in Los Angeles alone.

He has also appeared as an actor in 13 Broadway and Off-Broadway shows including Greenwillow with Anthony Perkins, The Body Beautiful  with Jack Warden, Promenade  with Madeline Kahn, Edward Albee’s Bartleby and Best Foot Forward, in which he co-starred with Christopher Walken and Liza Minnelli and sang “Buckle Down, Winsocki” on the original cast album. Directors he has worked with include Elia Kazan, Stella Adler, Herb Ross, George Abbott, George Roy Hill, Bobby Lewis, Peter Hunt, George Schaeffer, Robert Moore, Alan Schneider, Joe Layton, Gene Saks, Martin Charnin and Jerome Robbins. TV credits range from Mary Martin’s “Peter Pan” to “Cheers”, “Kojak”, a recurring role on “The Patty Duke Show”, “N.Y.P.D.”, “The Sid Caesar Hour”, “Playhouse 90”, “The Ed Sullivan Show”, among many others, as well as a two-year run as Paul Stewart on “As the World Turns”.

Mr. Gaynes was reently presented with a “Legend of Off-Broadway” honor by the Off-Broadway Alliance at Sardi’s in New York City.